E-NEWS FROM THE NATIONAL VACCINE INFORMATION CENTER

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“Protecting the health and informed consent rights of children since 1982.”

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BL Fisher Note:

Congratulations to Dawn Richardson and the parents, enlightened health care professionals and many legislators in Texas who fought for and won the right to informed consent to vaccination in that state. The Governor of Texas, too, should be congratulated for having the wisdom to sign it into law. So far, they are holding the line against a crude attempt by medical doctors, public health officials, drug company lobbyists and a few legislators to take away the constitutional right to free exercise of sincere religious and conscientiously held beliefs.

http://www.amarillonet.com/stories/072003/new_vaccinebill.shtml

Amarillo Globe-News

Web posted Sunday, July 20, 2003

1:20 a.m. CT

Vaccine rollback bill may die

Backers of conscientious objection bill fearless of any repeal threat

By George Schwarz/george.schwarz@amarillonet.com

A bill that would roll back the right of parents to not immunize their children has likely died in a legislative committee, opening the way for unvaccinated children to attend school and day care this fall.

House Bill 89, by Rep. Jaime Capelo, D-Corpus Christi, was left pending in the House Public Health Committee, which Capelo chairs. The bill retains the right of parents to refuse school-required vaccinations and bars schools from refusing admission to those children.

The conscientious, or philosophical, objection was added to medical and religious grounds as part of an omnibus health reorganization measure that passed during the recent regular session.

Even if the bill makes it out of committee, the only way it then could pass would be for Gov. Rick Perry to add it to the list of issues - the call - he wants considered during the special session, said Kathy Walt, the governor’s spokeswoman.

“There hasn’t been a decision to open the call to that issue,” she said.

But the lawmaker who sponsored the conscientious objection measure, Rep. Arlene Wohlgemuth, R-Burleson, said, “I would be surprised if at this late date whether anything else is added to the call. I’m personally not expecting it to be added to the call.”

And while Dawn Richardson, president of Parents Requesting Open Vaccine Education and an advocate for keeping the measure in place, isn’t taking the committee’s action for granted, she agreed with Wohlgemuth that the bill is in trouble.

“There’s a lot of variables here,” she said. “Nothing’s a sure thing right now.”

The bill staying in the committee may be because Capelo isn’t able to reconvene the panel or he lacks the votes to get the measure out of committee.

Capelo didn’t return a call to the Globe-News.

“There’s not a lot of committee support for it,” Richardson said of the HB 89.

Some representatives back mandatory immunizations for school but don’t like the physician community’s removing patients from their practice when parents ask for their children to not be vaccinated.

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